It's been a year since The Keepers came out, so we're revisiting the story and catching up with some of the people impacted by it. NPR's Kelly McEvers interviews The Keepers director Ryan White and Jean Wehner, one of the survivors who bravely shared her story. Plus, self proclaimed grandma Nancy Drew, aka Gemma Hoskins, updates us on the cold case and what her life has been like since the series came out. You can find more information and resources on how to support survivors at thekeepersimpact.com. Gemma Hoskins is also supporting the SURF GoFundMe page to help raise money for Sexual Abuse Survivors of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. You can find out more about that here: www.gofundme.com/5au8h7c.
It's been a year since The Keepers came out, so we're revisiting the story and catching up with some of the people impacted by it.
NPR's Kelly McEvers interviews The Keepers director Ryan White and Jean Wehner, one of the survivors who bravely shared her story. Plus, self proclaimed grandma Nancy Drew, aka Gemma Hoskins, updates us on the cold case and what her life has been like since the series came out.
You can find more information and resources on how to support survivors at thekeepersimpact.com.
Gemma Hoskins is also supporting the SURF GoFundMe page to help raise money for Sexual Abuse Survivors of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. You can find out more about that here: www.gofundme.com/5au8h7c.
Rae: Welcome to You Can't Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix.
[Music]
Rae: I'm Rae Votta, and I'm hosting this episode. Every other week on You Can't Make This Up, we feature a new interviewer discussing a different Netflix original series or film with special guests. What do the films and series have in common? They're all surprisingly true.
This week, we're revisiting the hit docu-series, The Keepers. It's been a year since it came out, and we still can't stop talking about it. The Keepers is a seven part docu-series that investigates the unsolved murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a nun and Catholic high school teacher in Baltimore.
In November 1969, Sister Cathy went missing and her body wasn't found for two months. It wasn't until recently that former students started gathering together online to try and unravel the truth of what happened at their school, including the trauma the school's chaplain was inflicting upon young women and men.
[Music]
Rae: Jean Wahner, one of the survivors of the story, joins director Ryan White and Kelly McEvers of NPR's Embedded. We highly recommend you watch The Keepers before listening to this episode. Consider this your spoiler alert. Now, without further ado, here's Kelly McEvers with Jean and Ryan.
[Music]
Kelly: Welcome to both of you. I'm so glad to get a chance to talk to you, and I kind of just want to like—I just want you to sort of start at the beginning. When you watch a series like this, you have so many questions, and mine is just like, how did it all start?
Ryan: It was a personal connection. So my mom is from Baltimore, a big Catholic family, and my aunt was Sister Cathy's student at Archbishop Keough High School, and she was actually in Jean's class. They were the same age. So I think about four years ago now, Jean for the first time, in an article by Tom Nugent—who's that journalist who appears throughout the series—put her name on Jane Doe for the first time, and my mom and my aunt sent me that blog post and said, oh my God. We've always wondered who Jane Doe was in Baltimore, and it turns out it's a family friend of ours. Would you like to meet her?
And that's how it all began. It began with myself and my producer, Jessica Hargrave. We flew out to Baltimore, no cameras, not knowing anything about The Keepers or how large this story was, solely to meet Jean. So we went to Jean's condo. We had a five hour conversation with her and a few of her family members, and I left that condo thinking this woman is so compelling. I've never met someone like her. I've never entered a story like this before. But if she wants to do this with us, then I want to do it with her. And that was the beginning of a many month process of deciding if this was the next best step for Jean, to really come out this publicly as Jane Doe.
Kelly: Right. Did you consult research and experts and that kind of thing in this field? Did you feel like you had to do some homework?
Ryan: No, and I probably should have. My homework was the survivors, and they really held my hand through the process. Jean specifically, but all of the women you see in The Keepers, and many women and men who are not in The Keepers, who wanted to speak confidentially or only on the phone, or just have a lunch with us. And they really taught me a lot. But I should have done my preparation for what pulling the lid off The Keepers was going to do in the world, I think.
And so I wasn't prepared for really how extremely popular and how much of a phenomenon Netflix is worldwide. So I had been so tunnel visioned in making The Keepers and invested in these personal stories of these women who survived Maskell's abuse and Sister Cathy's story, that once The Keepers came out it was—and I'm talking hours after The Keepers came out—it was a nauseating experience. Feeling the flood of people coming in with their own stories from all over the world. Their stories of abuse who were touched by The Keepers, touched by Jean's story in some way, and wanted to share their own.
That was my very ill prepared way of the series coming out, and then we began contacting a lot of experts saying, how do we handle all these people with their own personal stories that we can't possibly tell?
Kelly: Yeah. One of the things you did in the film—the series. I guess I should call it a series.
Ryan: I still say film. Don't worry about it.
Kelly: Yeah. I mean, and you had to do it. You had to recreate things, right? And you had to recreate horrible things. How hard was that?
Ryan: That was a very hard decision, and it's interesting that you say we had to. Because it was a choice to.
Kelly: Or did you? Yeah, yeah. You didn't.
Ryan: We didn't have to. So it was a creative decision, and that sounds pretty blunt, calling it creative. But when you're working in documentary as a medium, you need to illustrate the story in some way.
Kelly: Yeah. It's interesting that you've got so many choices to make, and it seems like you erred on the side of sort of minimalism, right? Just a few details to show to us, and then kind of let us fill in the rest in a way.
Ryan: Yeah.
Kelly: The desk. The leaves as feet are walking through the woods. Things like that.
Ryan: And that's across the board with The Keepers, not just in those sequences, I think. I know in the edit room, we were often saying less is more. Because these stories are horrific, and the emotion that surrounds it is exponentially horrific. So if you watch the series, I don't think Jean will mind me saying that there were a lot of tears while we were making this series over the course of many years. There's only one scene where you actually see her cry in The Keepers, and we could have included a lot for emotional impact.
But we always thought less is more. There was one moment where Jean broke down after a specific memory of reading something to the archdiocese in the 1990s about what had happened to her, and she broke down, and that was the moment that we felt like we should include that was the most honest to Jean's emotions.
Jean can comment on this, but I actually had a conversation with her about including that sequence. I always have the contractual control with my documentary subjects to include anything. That's part of the deal of documentary subjects is they sign a release form saying you can edit this freely. But almost in all my documentaries, there's one moment with my main subjects where I want to make sure that they are okay with a certain scene, and I feel like I have to make my argument for it and make sure that they are prepared for it, and that was that scene with Jean.
So I talked to her about it and she can comment on what that was like to make the decision to allow me to include it, because if she had said this is too much, I would have left it on the cutting room floor.
Kelly: And Jean, how did you—what did you think about that?
Jean: He came in one evening, just while in the course of our talking. He said, I want to present this. This is something that—because it was a very painful evening of reading those memories that I had handwritten and given to the archdiocese years ago. You have to remember, I never read them to anyone else. I read them to the archdiocese representatives, and that's as far as it went. So the things I'm pulling out of a box were in my garage for 20 years.
So I'm reading it as if it's really being heard for the first time. So when he came in and said that one scene. Now, there had been a lot of other very tearful and painful scenes. But my first response to him is, why? Is it to sensationalize this? Do you need to do that in order to draw people in? And he explained to me why. That he felt that it was the one scene that would really, truly express the depths of emotion.
Because I am a person who comes off pretty much in control, and I talk in a very clear and articulate way. And to see that moment of emotion put all the walls down. It's when everything is just—now, there were other times, and if he had said he needed more, that would have been a different story. But he made sense to me.
Kelly: So you guys were partners in this endeavor. I mean, just all along.
Ryan: Partners is the best word.
Jean: Yeah.
Ryan: I think most documentaries are like that. But this one, more so than any. We're one year out of The Keepers release. So it's easy to talk about now because the finish line is way behind us. But I remember going to the Nantucket Film Festival with Jean soon after the premiere, and it was actually Jean's first public appearance as Jane Doe. She did a Q&A with me. I always call it our—Jean is the one who initiated this. We went to dinner, and I always call it our breakup conversation, which was tearful from both sides.
But I also like to joke that Jean's been my most honest relationship I've ever had. She brings an honesty out in me, and we had a conversation, a tearful one, about how this—we were moving to the next phase of our relationship and I wasn't going to be in her life for two weeks of every month, which we had been doing that for years. Visiting Baltimore half of every month and spending so much time together. And I think it's important to say that The Keepers is so heavy, and that's because the experience that we're relaying in The Keepers is heavy.
But Jean and I also had a lot of fun together, and that just doesn't end up in the series because the series needs that gravity. That's the experience we're conveying.
Kelly: You can't. Right. You can't be on like a rollercoaster in a scene. Right.
Ryan: But we also had a lot of fun together. So it was an emotional breakup, but it was also a breakup of someone that I had really grown to love and enjoyed spending time with. Like it's so nice even hearing her voice right now, because we just don't get to talk as often as we used to, and we definitely don't get to see each other as often as we used to.
Jean: Same here. I think that the thing also to remember is that this was a very intimate, private relationship that was growing. I was growing and trusting this other, and I also for probably the first year and a half, could not allow myself to think it was going any further than three people and me in a room, or the family gathering, or the comfortable places that I would be. It was probably a year and a half in, and my daughter would tell you.
She would say, you know this is going public, right? And I just couldn't allow myself to be there. It wasn't one of the steps yet. It's the way that I work. It's the survivor in me. This feels right. I can do this. So a year and a half into it is when I started to realize. Maybe that was when Netflix was starting to be shared as a possible partner. That I had to really come to terms with, oh my gosh.
So then it was, to say that it was a partnership is almost understating. I feel that I love Ryan, and I came to trust his way of seeing me. And there are few people up until that point that I allowed in to see me. And I could grow from the way that I saw the trust in their eyes of who I was, and this man did that. We're still regular people, but he was ministering in some way to that broken child within me that was having the opportunity to talk and to share and to not be denied and to not be told she's lying. To be encouraged to take a break, and let's just take a walk and not film.
He heard me. He got me on some level. But he was working at doing that too.
Kelly: How long did it take to make the series?
Ryan: I think it's about three years from beginning til end.
Kelly: I'm sure anyone who's watched it, the first question they have is, what's happened in the case? I know Gemma is probably going to speak to this too. But what's happened since the release?
Ryan: I mean, we continue. We're not documenting it anymore. We have no plans to make a second season. But Jess and I definitely continue to keep our ear to the ground, and a lot of information came out after The Keepers. Luckily we had created quite a good relationship with the Baltimore Police by the end, where we can field that information to them. So I am still hopeful. I mean, there's obviously certain things I can't say, but I'm still very hopefully that this murder can be solved. I still think it can be solved, and that only increased after The Keepers came out.
Kelly: Can you give a couple of examples of things that have come forward that you can talk about?
Ryan: I've got to be very careful. I think you can't unravel the abuse that was happening at Archbishop Keough from the death of Sister Cathy. So while we know that they exhumed Maskell's body, I think that's a very positive step. The DNA on Sister Cathy's body, whatever that sample is did not match Father Maskell's. That didn't surprise anybody because the predominant theory has never been that Father Maskell actually did it himself.
Kelly: Right.
Ryan: But that was a huge step in showing that the Baltimore Police were finally, at least publicly, showing that they took him seriously as a suspect, showing that they took Jean seriously as a witness. So that was a big step. But people coming forward about the abuse, once you find out more information about who was abused? Who were the abusers? Because we couldn't include all of that in the series, perhaps for legal reasons, or this was a big web of people.
You can start connecting the dots more to people that might have been involved or had a motive for Sister Cathy not to be living anymore. So that's the stuff we're really looking at now, and I know the police are taking that very seriously.
Kelly: Interesting. Jean, you said you're not really active on social media and that sort of thing. How closely, if at all, do you follow kind of every new detail of this case?
Jean: For one, I'm somebody who Gemma and Abbie will send me whatever comes across. They know that I'm not on Facebook. So they send me different things that might show up or different articles or something that somebody has said. I made a point after The Keepers came out. I went to the police and I told them everything I had told the courts. All the people that I remembered. I wanted to make sure that if anyone else came forward because of The Keepers, that they would be privy to the names that I had already said.
And that, to me, was good because I found out that they really don't look back over all the deposition notes and all that. So I gave them that information. I also feel that I get triggered a lot. So there are certain things where I'm starting to step out. So I've talked to different survivors. One of the reasons I'm not on Facebook, one of the many reasons is it would overload me and it would stop my process.
But also, I'm not really involved with the alumni, and as I'm still integrating with that last year, and that last year is after Cathy was dead. And I know not just me. I'm sure other girls in that school now have been threatened. Their life has been threatened because of that, and we did whatever we were told. And if you can imagine being in a situation where you need to embrace part of you that, for so many years, you denied. You believed that you were what they told you you were.
So what happens now is I slowly am stepping out. I'm giving different talks, and then I get responses back from people that I hear a little bit more what is going on. Then I move out a little bit more. Then I get something back. Then I move. So I'm kind of in that step by step still.
Kelly: Well, kind of the way life goes, it sounds.
Jean: Yes.
Kelly: It's so interesting how you know. Just how self aware you are. You know. You sort of step in and you step out. You calibrate it. You know when it starts to be a bit much.
Jean: Yeah, well, and that's part of the healing too, Kelly. I'm only speaking to other survivors and other victims right now. It's not easy, and I have had people over the year want to know how did I do it? Or want me to coach them. It's as if I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and they want to know how did I get there? The truth is that we're all individual and we all survive differently, and I can't tell you why I'm sitting here and why I'm not dead like maybe another victim who that's as far as they could go with it.
But I do feel that when I think of The Keepers, I would not be sitting here talking. I would not have been able to say the things that really matter to other survivors and other victims. I believe that with Netflix, this came out May 19. Then by October of 2017, the Me Too movement started. I believe that The Keepers was extremely powerful in being part of that foundation. There were other things, the women's march and all that. But this was powerful.
I agree with Ryan. It went worldwide. I think that we were all stunned. We were shocked of the responses from all over the world, and I believe that we were instrumental in this period of disclosure and transparency and holding people accountable. I think that it's an ongoing and we'll just keep right on doing it however we can.
Kelly: You talked about this just overwhelming onslaught of people who came forward after The Keepers came out. How did it all come to you? Just emails? What was it like?
Ryan: Every avenue possible. I mean, every form of social media. Every form of communication. We had made a very concerted effort, that most of our main characters went black on social media, or being able to find their addresses. People could still find—would get through the cracks and find Jean's phone number and be leaving voicemails. So we were getting an onslaught. It was all positive. Very little of it was negative, minus the archdiocese side which we can talk about later.
But from the personal reactions, they were all positive. But that really, I think, hurts you when you know you can't be a part of telling all these people's stories. So you would get the most heartfelt personal sagas from someone's life in a city, in a country that you've barely ever heard of, saying, would you come document my story? The same thing happened to me. And so we were rattled, and that first weekend I spent the entire weekend physically ill, vomiting, because I was so unprepared, I think.
I had been so tunnel visioned in getting The Keepers to the finish line, and then it felt like you pulled the lid off of so much pain around the world. And you had to ask yourself, is this a good thing? And you care so much about people like Jean and Theresa and all these survivors, that you're also calling them nonstop to make sure that they're keeping their head above water. So it was a lot.
Jean: Yeah, and I would say that it was more like pulling the scab off of the wound. This is a deep, deep wound. It's systemic. It is unacceptable, and yet it is so accepted. So I think it's just—what The Keepers did was pull a scab off of the wound, and I expected it to come out like pain. Like people hurting me. People saying I'm lying. Doing all the things I was told they would do. And I was overwhelmed with how accepting and loving and connected and supportive everyone was.
It was shocking. Don't you think, Ryan? It was just shocking. It was like you couldn't get your head around that this is real. This is real. These are real people. It was powerful. It was shocking, and it did take time to digest it. To somehow stand in it. I felt like I was kind of thrown for a while.
Kelly: That is how I heard about the series. It was a relative who saw it and then had a story, and then went searching in a database. You know what I mean? It just prompted action, and then it was just like all of a sudden you couldn't not be talking about it, it seemed like.
Jean: Well, Kelly, it's interesting with myself not being on Facebook or the social media. So some of that is comforting. But the other part is I'd be walking somewhere, and all of a sudden, someone across a hall would yell, "Jean!" and you'd look. When you share the depth of a wound like that, and you do it not because you want to talk about the pain and the suffering, but you do it because you know that it's going to help others.
It really does. And I was in the space outside of kind of getting my feet back under me. People would just come right up. It's heart to heart. It is the biggest hug you can imagine. They're saying in my ear some sweet nothing, as if they are a long lost lover. Then we would look each other in the eye and we'd go about our business. And I was shocked. My space was invaded. All kinds of things were going on, but I couldn't stop myself. It was heart to heart.
We had gone through any barriers that would keep us from knowing we are all wounded. We are all vulnerable. We have all had something happen that we felt that we were misused, abused, and somehow changed ourselves a little in order to survive. And I think that's just—it was raw. Ryan, I think wouldn't you say? It was just raw.
Ryan: Totally.
Kelly: It had to be difficult. It had to be hard though, too.
Jean: Oh, very much so for me. Ryan is in a different place with it a little bit. For me it was extremely hard. Because you see, as a survivor who didn't talk about this, no one knew about it other than a chosen few.
Kelly: Right, and then all of a sudden everyone knew about it.
Ryan: Especially in Baltimore, where Jean still lives.
Jean: Everyone. Everyone. Oh, yeah. And as a survivor, sometimes to protect yourself you're in your own little bubble. You're kind of out there. You present. You've got your persona going, and next thing you know, here are people bursting through my bubble. It's like touching my arm or giving me these huge hugs, and it shakes a part of my coping mechanisms up. Like oh my God, what just happened?
Then I started not wanting to be out that much because I didn't know how to deal with that. I didn't know how to talk about that. It wasn't someone I wanted to talk to. I didn't even know them. All these people. I couldn't even tell you what their names were. It was very hard. I think it was very hard, and probably all of the survivors would say the same, who were in The Keepers.
Kelly: It's almost as if this willingness to be vulnerable and be public in that space, the series, is one thing. But then people see you and they expect that it's going to be like that all the time. You're like, I just want to go to the grocery store. It must be.
Jean: Well, they think they know you, and we all value feeling like don't think you know me. I mean, so it's like to be in the grocery store and just to have somebody come up next to you over yogurt, excuse me. You're Jean, aren't you? Oh my gosh. Can I just give you a hug? I'm standing in the liquor store of all things, getting my red wine, and as I am reaching in my wallet to pay, this woman is standing next to me. She's like, you're Jean, aren't you? I was like, yes. She said, I could tell by your hair. I was like, oh my gosh.
Can I give you a hug? That's all I want is just a hug. I'm okay.
Kelly: Oh boy. That's a whole lot.
Jean: But you know what? It's been all worth it, Kelly. I need to say that. That this is just a sign that people are hungry. They're so hungry. They're not hungry for the stories. They don't want all those details. We've got that bombarding us. They're hungry for truth. They're hungry for people who are willing to be vulnerable. People who are willing to say, I don't know. I've got all kinds of questions. Why didn't you tell anyone? I don't know.
I'm still working on that in therapy. I don't know. To have that impact on me, like I don't know. I ask myself the same question. That must mean I should have an answer. Well, people were starting to understand that this is extremely murky, and as Ryan has said, you can't separate the abuse and the murder because they are all intertwined. So you've got a whole lot more murk. It's a whole lot more weediness, and we're still working on it. I think a lot of us are doing pretty good, but it's a lot of work and it's worth it.
Kelly: There's something heartening about the fact that people respond so well to something that isn't clear cut, doesn't tie up in a bow, that is murky. That people are open to that and responsive to that.
Ryan: We used to joke that our tagline for The Keepers was going to be, The Keepers: There Will Be No Answers.
Kelly: Exactly. Just in case.
Ryan: I'm wondering if people would respond to that, because we were in the wake of The Jinx and Making a Murderer. The Jinx which was on HBO and the Making a Murderer which was on Netflix. And I was really blown away that people were willing to go into The Keepers with an open mind, and with an open mind feeling like they'd still gone on a journey. I think that's because of people like Jean.
Kelly: You mention the archdiocese and their response after the series came out. What was it?
Ryan: That was the most shocking response of all was the moment The Keepers came out, the archdiocese had this campaign, this social media campaign. I think they had a hashtag called #thekeepersuntold.
Kelly: Really?
Ryan: Yeah. They posted this gif on Twitter that said spoiler alert, and then linked to the article where Maskell's DNA did not match, as if they were proud that Father Maskell had not had a DNA sample on Sister Cathy's body. I don't know why somebody from the archdiocese of Baltimore wasn't fired for the way they came out against The Keepers. They curbed it really fast and they apologized for their reaction.
I mean, they hadn't even seen the series and they came out aggressively. We've never heard a response from the Vatican about The Keepers, or even anyone above the archdiocese of Baltimore, as far as I know. Nobody from that institution has weighed in about it. It's been totally insular to the archdiocese that exists in Baltimore.
But what we have seen, which has been very heartening, is Catholics in Baltimore got angry. That's what remessaged it. So when they started this ridiculous Twitter campaign, going after our series, going after the survivors, it was the Catholics that were responding and bombarding their Twitter page, bombarding their Facebook page saying, this is horrifying how you are reacting to this series. Did you even watch it? This is not funny to release Maskell's DNA record.
Then they started deleting things and apologized. But I'm still shocked no one was ever fired at the archdiocese of Baltimore for how they came out about The Keepers.
Kelly: So there wasn't like direct communication with you?
Ryan: No. We had had direct communication while we were making the series, where I tried to get them to go on the record and they repeatedly denied that. And I tried afterwards, there was a petition incited by the popularity of The Keepers, one of those Change.org petitions where I think over 65,000 people signed a petition asking the archdiocese of Baltimore to make public the records on Father Maskell. They still deny doing that.
So everything was indirect after The Keepers came out. There was no point for me to communicate with them directly anymore. I had tried that all through the series, and then when the public was so incensed by it and just wanted transparency and the archdiocese continued to stonewall the process. They're never going to release those records. There's nothing that's going to make them release those records. Everything happens behind closed doors, including those mediations, which they then come out and twist the words of the survivors.
There's no way that they're ever going to come out with that transparency. So that's not my goal anymore. I tried in making the series to make them transparent. My goal now is just to make sure that The Keepers has an impact and the survivors are being heard, and that their words are not being twisted publicly. Because that does make me angry.
Kelly: Jean, you said you go and talk sometimes to other survivors, and you said that you mainly tell them that it's different for everyone, right? When they ask you how did you do it.
Jean: Yeah, and I don't do that a lot. I do it more through talks that I'm giving. So I speak to groups, or to the ones that I have discerned feels right, and I've said it to some people who have kind of gotten the opportunity to say, how did you do it? And there is no answer. There is no answer. I can't tell you how I did it. I can tell you that I'm this far, but I can't tell you how I did it. I can tell you there's a lot of tools out there. I can say that I'm a firm believer in psychotherapy.
I'm a firm believer in the deeper, more intense work that you do within yourself through meditation and through journaling. The tools that can be used and that might need a mentor, or someone who is guiding you. The main thing is to find those people. To find them and to work a step at a time with them. I do think that the grassroots group, which I think Abbie and Gemma were a big part of pulling together through the Facebook group.
As much as I'm not on it, Kelly, my heart is a part of it. My spirit soars because they were the beginning of church for me. After what happened 20 some years ago, that was church. They believed. They encouraged. They called forth. They supported. All of what they have done was what I would say if I were asked church is about.
Kelly: I guess sort of the final question that I want to ask is, you know people who have watched the series and probably people who are listening. People who have lived through things themselves as you've found, right? With this just insane response. So many people telling their stories. What would you want survivors—I mean, you talked about the tools you have and how you don't totally know how you got through it, which is interesting. But what would you want survivors to know? What do you think is—if you could have a conversation with all of them, what would you want them to know?
Jean: For one, I would want them to know that they're not alone. Because usually when there is an abusive situation, no matter how quick it is and no matter how quiet it is and no matter how private it is, the biggest thing that happens is you think that you're the only one that's ever experienced that, or that this was something you did. So it does feel very singular. But I would say know you're not alone, and find those that you can talk to. If it's one person that you can risk sharing, do it. Do it. Do it.
And it doesn't have to be your family. Family can show up in many different disguises. So find that person or find that group. But if it doesn't feel right, walk away from it. But just know, you're not alone. That there are others who understand, who get it, and that you did nothing to cause it. You did absolutely nothing to cause it, that this was done to you and it is a crime. No matter what words people want to put to it. It is not a sex act. It is a demoralizing and dehumanizing act of torture, no matter what degree the abuse is.
Because it is an invasion of our privacy, of our space, of our being, and it is not about sex. It is about terror. It is about torture. It is about keeping you from knowing you are powerful, and find that person. Find that group. But know you're not alone.
Kelly: Jean Wehner, thank you so much.
Jean: My heart goes out to—that's the other thing that happens, Kelly. When a door opens like that, you know that you're not alone. But it also brings a lot of heartfelt feeling for others, and I just want everyone to know who has been through it on some degree and some level. I love you. I really do. Because the more we share, the more we share. So you share with someone and then they share with someone, and then they share with someone. And I'll be honest with you, you don't see it from the powers that be.
I'm not getting on the archdiocese. They're not putting out a public statement that we have something that we need to apologize for. We need to work. We're not getting it from the powers. We're getting it from each other and from those supports that we have in place. So keep up. Keep on keeping on, guys out there. Guys and gals. We're doing it. We're doing it.
Again, I'm a me too.
[Music]
Kelly: We're doing it thanks to you. Really, seriously, thank you again and again, for talking and sharing your story. Ryan White, thanks to you.
Ryan: Oh, thank you. And thank you, Jean, for sharing. It was so nice to get to hear your voice for another hour.
Jean: I miss you, Ryan.
Ryan: I miss you.
Rae: That was Kelly McEvers with Jean Wehner and Ryan White talking about The Keepers one year later. One of the most inspiring parts of The Keepers was watching former students come together to investigate a case that had gone cold. At the center of that investigation were Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub. Gemma joins us now to discuss how life has changed since Netflix aired The Keepers.
Gemma: Leading up to it, I was very confident that it would be impactful but not the way it's had an impact at this point.
[Music]
Gemma: My name is Gemma Hoskins and I'm a retired teacher from the Baltimore area. Sister Cathy Cesnik was my teacher when I was at Keough in the sixties and seventies. None of us involved or being in the documentary saw it before the public saw it. I was not apprehensive, excited, nervous, not knowing what to expect, because the filmmakers had 800 hours of film and they had to whittle that down to seven one hour episodes. So we had no idea what we were going to see.
The Keepers released on the west coast at midnight, which means that at 3:00 in the morning on the east coast, it was available. So I had three friends that I had taught with. None of them went to high school with me, and they knew that I was involved in this and they had supported me all the way through. But I invited them to come and watch. I made them get up at six.
I did actually wake up and watch five minutes of it at three in the morning. But then I thought, well, that's cheating. I'll wait until they get up. So I made everybody coffee and donuts and we all got up, and we watched it on and off all day. Then I think we watched the last two episodes the next morning. I was overwhelmed. I was touched. I thought it truly was a masterpiece. It was a piece of artwork.
Of course, I've never been involved in a documentary, but it didn't look like a typical documentary. To me, it looked like a beautifully crafted piece of sculpture.
[Music]
Gemma: There were some tears. It's hard to say my reactions because I really felt like we needed to break it up. Like we'd watch an episode and then we’d walk out on the beach, or we'd go get a pizza and come back. I was okay until the last episode when Jean and Charles were both featured, and Charles told his story. Because Charles was my neighbor. His yard and mine backed up to each other, and I didn't know about this until I learned that he had been involved in abuse at St. Clemens.
So he was the guy across the lawn that walked his dog when I walked my dog, and we'd become really good friends. It's not been easy for him since the series aired. It's been a rollercoaster for a lot of us. This is not all yay, it's wonderful. It worked. We're all optimistic. It's been really difficult for me and I think for most of the people involved in it at different times during the last year. There's always some trolls online who are going to criticize people who are making a statement, or who aren't afraid to talk to the media.
I've only had a few threats, but not many, and the people where I live, they take care of me. They make sure I'm safe. Not that I need to be taken care of, but sometimes I do.
[Music]
Gemma: I left my Facebook messenger open. I literally received thousands of messages from all over the world. The series was released in 190 countries in 25 languages. So a lot of my messages, I had to hit the translate button to see what people were saying. But I have to say that my life is so rich with the new friends I've met because of this. If you think about something good coming from a horrible situation, for me it would be the people that I've met that care and they care about me, because they've become really dear friends in the community where I live now.
The other thing is that people—I think they feel comfortable with me, and I am not a therapist. I am a retired teacher. But I always tell them the same thing. Tell the police. Talk to a therapist. Get an attorney.
[Music]
Gemma: I can tell you a few updates, but your listeners will need to understand that the police do not share anything with us because this is still a very active code case, as is Joyce Malecki's case. But I can tell you that since The Keepers aired, we have been given information about a number of suspects from witnesses or from people who were abused, about those suspects. Another thing that happened since the series was released is that Archbishop Keough High School was closed in June of 2017, about a year ago.
It had a declining high school population, but the archdiocese was fully aware that The Keepers was being released. I think that telling people it was a budgetary issue was a good cover up. They've covered up a lot, and I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a daughter or a granddaughter in my family going to Keough after watching The Keepers. The building itself is still standing, but it's our understanding that UPS has bought the building and that when the elementary school closes, which is indefinite, the building itself will come down.
But I am perfectly fine with that building coming down.
[Music]
Gemma: How do I help myself? Taking care of myself is something I have to purposely put into my day. My philosophy is to do something productive, something therapeutic and something fun every day, and it could be the same thing. But so far I've been able to do that. Living at the seashore certainly helps. Sometimes I just watch the ocean. That's amazing. I guess this is not too far off the topic, but I really feel like what I'm doing now with this case is why I was born.
I'm not religious. I kind of deal direct. But I do believe that we're each here for a reason. I lost my dad very suddenly. I lost my husband to cancer when we were 35. I've had a number of health issues, and I always wondered, why am I having to deal with all this? Now I know. Because the things I've dealt with and came out ahead and okay, I think it all got me ready for what I'm doing now.
[Music]
Rae: Thank you, Gemma. Gemma is currently supporting a survivors fund on GoFundMe.com. The link to that page and the official Keepers website, TheKeepersImpact.com which has other resources to help survivors, are in the episode description.
[Music]
Rae: Now let's hear how you all have been feeling about The Keepers.
Female: This is a Tweet from @rachelsyme. "While we are talking about women who broke silences this year, can we just shout out the women of The Keepers who did some of the most brave, vigilante investigative work to try to find justice for their friend?"
Male: This Tweet is from @har_shone. "Watching The Keepers and this shit is real. I am so angry and sad for these women. But then also so in awe of their bravery."
Female: This Tweet is from Pamela Colloff. "One of the most remarkable things about The Keepers, it's narrated almost exclusively by women in their sixties. We so rarely hear these voices."
Male: This is a Tweet from @nell_andrew. "Oh my God, The Keepers. Only one more episode to go, and for me this might be one of the best true crime docs of the last decade."
[Music]
Rae: If you want to share your thoughts on any upcoming shows, make sure to find us on Twitter @cantmakethisup, or on Facebook at You Can't Make This Up Netflix.
Now, before we go, there's still one thing we need to do. Here in You Can't Make This Up, we have a segment we like to call, What You Watching? It's where we find out what the people who make these original Netflix shows like to watch on Netflix. Did you know you're listening to a Netflix podcast from Netflix?
Let's hear what The Keepers director, Ryan White, and one of the series characters, Gemma Hoskins, are watching on—you guessed it—Netflix.
Ryan: I just watched Godless, which I thought was incredible. And I watched Ozark.
Gemma: Oh my gosh. I have done—let's see. I started watching Flint Town. I watched—what's the one? Oh gosh. Now you're putting me on the spot because I watch Netflix every night and I can't come up with anything. I'm a documentary freak and a true crime freak.
Rae: And that's it for this week's episode. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new series for you to dig into. You can find this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends, tell your parents, tell your dog. You know the drill.
Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. This is You Can't Make This Up. I'm Rae Votta, and thanks for listening.
[Music]